KIRAWAN - 1936 53' JAKOBSEN & PETERSON 53 Bermuda Cutter
Portsmouth Rhode Island United States
$1,200,000 USD

Philip Rhodes was a prolific designer starting in the 1920’s through the 1960’s with a wide variety of designs to his credit, ranging from the Dyer Dhow dinghy to a 123’ motorsailer, including the 1962 America’s Cup winner WEATHERLY. One design that did much for his reputation early in his career was the 53’ Bermuda Cutter KIRAWAN, which won the stormy 1936 Newport-Bermuda Race just one month after launching.  KIRAWAN carried on over the years with various Hollywood celebrities, racing in the Pacific classics and eventually falling into serious disrepair. Thankfully, her current owner got wind of her pending demise and in 2017 he began a period of lengthy restoration by Joe Loughborough's team of experienced craftsmen at LMI. The owner had hoped to trace her previous routes, and he did just that with the 2022/2024 Newport Bermuda Races, finishing a respectable 5th in class and 24th overall in a fleet of 89 in the 2024 edition. She is now standing tall and ready for her next owner to enjoy one of the finest classic yachts available today.   

ON THE 2022 NEWPORT - BERMUDA RACE “We were really thrilled by the way she handled, especially in the really heavy weather when there were big seas and winds gusting to 35 knots, you just knew you were in a classic ocean racing boat.”  

SUMMARY OF REFIT AND RESTORATION BY LMI, PORTSMOUTH, RI  2017 - 2019  

GENERAL  

FROM AFT DECK  

• Flush ensign socket and traditional stern light at taffrail  
• Flush lazarette hatch in aft deck 
• Panama mooring fairlead port & starboard with cleats
• Cowl vent
• Harken bronze traveler car and track  

COCKPIT  

Harken Bronze winches:  

TRUNK CABIN  

SIDE DECKS  

FOREDECK  

GENERAL  

FROM AFT OWNER CABIN  

PASSAGEWAY FORWARD 

NAVIGATION STATION TO STARBOARD  

HEAD AND SHOWER COMPARTMENT TO PORT  

SALOON  

FORWARD TO GALLEY  

FORWARD CABIN  

RIG  

SAILS BY NORTH  

NAVIGATION  

COMMUNICATIONS  

PHILIP L. RHODES DESIGN NO. 399 LAUNCHED 23 MAY 1936

New York stockbroker Robert P. Baruch can’t have enjoyed being second last over the finish line in the 1934 Bermuda race, his 56 ft William Hand-designed schooner ZINGARA arriving two days behind the leading boats. Baruch, however - a very able small boat racing helmsman - had time on his side; he was only 25. 

By the 1936 Bermuda race he’d become a partner in his family’s Wall Street brokerage house, H. Hentz & Co., was now married, and had only just taken delivery of this very fine yacht with all the potency to do much, much better. KIRAWAN was untried - launched only a month before the Bermuda Race start - though her designer Philip Rhodes well knew what she was capable of. But surely only in his wildest dreams could he have imagined beating Olin Stephens’s STORMY WEATHER boat for boat in a 635-mile slog to windward with gusts of up to 45 knots – and winning the race overall. 

The two years from 1934 to 1936 had also been happy ones for Rhodes, finding post-Great Depression stability working with Cox & King, yet with a free hand to develop his own portfolio. KIRAWAN’s Bermuda Race win brought international recognition for Rhodes, and at 41 took his career to another level. KIRAWAN’s renown was also assured, and her doghouse/ hard dodger became much copied, in particular by Sparkman & Stephens. 

But what then became of this first KIRAWAN? Pre-World War II is less known because she mostly cruised, renamed SILVANA. Reports vary, but at some late 1940s to early 1950s point she arrived on the West Coast and reverted to her original name. An early owner there is believed to have been Hollywood actress Terry Moore whose long-term relationship with Howard Hughes became the stuff of legend. 

KIRAWAN spent at least four decades sailing the Pacific, mostly out of Marina del Rey, competing in the Transpac twice in the mid-1950s and the 1964 Los Angeles - Tahiti Race. In the ownership of film producer Sandy Horowitz from c.1993, she enjoyed a major refit and was trucked back east to Newport, Rhode Island, for the 2000 Bermuda Race, which she finished but revealed further issues to be addressed. A subsequent restoration attempt failed and KIRAWAN ended up in a very bad state until purchased by her present owner and savior in 2017.

Completing her major restoration at Joe Loughborough’s Portsmouth, Rhode Island, LMI yard, in the midst of the pandemic, undoubtedly slowed the rejuvenated KIRAWAN’s re-exposure to the classic yachting world, but she remains a beautiful, practical and potent classic cruiser racer, doing exactly what she did straight out of the box in 1936.   

TIMELINE - 1936 23 May - launch